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Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

reuters.com

311–320 of 544 posts

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone pointed out to me, the euromomo website is useful for this, it tracks the total mortality rate across Europe and compares it with the historical data. By ignoring the hospitalized/homestuck difference one can have a clearer idea of what is happening. Sadly I don't know of a way to get the data for the whole world.

Euromomo data is really interesting to me because of these two points: 1) the spike in death rate caused by Covid-19 this year is of the same magnitude as the normal flu season spike in 2016 2) this year's flue season spike was low compared to recent years. Maybe due to a warmer summer? One interpretation could be that a large number of vulnerable people escaped death from regular ILIs this European season, only to s…

But all the countries did introduce various measures to slow down the spread. Otherwise nobody could claim that the numbers remained compatable.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#312
post #204

I'm calling it now, I bet many people (>20%) have had it, whether they realize it or not. To be honest, I think it was all over the Bay Area in late December, Early January (when I'm pretty sure I had it) and Feb.

I thought the same thing until this afternoon. In January I fell extremely ill, covid symptoms, including lower right lung pneumonia. Today I tested negative for covid and antibodies. It seems to have been just a coincidence with a bad viral season.

Where were you able to test for antibodies and how accurate is this test? Asking since AFAIK, now widespread testing exists right now.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not compared to Norway. How did Norway have more cases a month ago and now Sweden has double and 10x as many deaths.

Belgium and Sweden have had a similar timeline yet Belgium has a much higher number of deaths/capita. Same could be said for a lot of countries that have had much more fatalities. Look at the higher fatality rates in Quebec too, even though the province set in place really strict lockdowns and has had it's first deaths much later than Sweden. My point here is that Sweden is well in the middle of the pack. So what giv…

Actually compared to many other countries Sweden did have community spread significantly later (10 days or so if I remember correctly). Also Sweden has large variations within the country, Stockholm was really a week or so ahead of everyone else

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#314
post #90
post #40

Adding to that, Netherlands' study of antibodies in blood donors' samples shows about 10x difference between the number of reported / tested cases and actual cases in the general population (i.e. a lot more people got it and were not sick): https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/16/world/europe/16re... ?

The Netherlands has 3.3k deaths vs 29k confirmed cases, which would give a CFR of ~10% I.e. the Netherlands aren't testing much. A 10x reduction there brings it back to the CFR range we see in countries with bigger testing programs. I'm not a specialist but have been following this for a while, and have yet to see evidence the IFR for this isnt around 0.5-1% (assuming decent healthcare). That's what we saw in the Dia…

Diamond princess skewed heavily towards an older age population, as did some of the hardest hit cities in Italy like Lombardi etc. To counter your point, there isn't any evidence to infer an IFR or 0.5-1% either. We simply don't know given the lack of antibodies testing in a randomized population set that's adequately representative of the right demographics in a given location (say NYC).

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#315
post #154

So people who are fit enough to pass active duty basic training tend not to have symptoms. Solution: put everyone through basic training?

I know you're joking, but putting everyone on a daily fitness regimen would likely save lives. (Obviously not something we can mandate.)

A friend and I were having a tangentially related conversation about net-healthy processes that could theoretically be mandated during a pandemic and their effects on the populace at large.

Putting everyone on a daily fitness regimen would almost certainly save lives, even outside of our current pandemic. Likewise, if things got bad enough that grocery stores had to close and the national guard / army / gov were called in to deliver daily rations to households, I wonder what kind of effect that'd have on the country's obesity problem long-term, also.

Ignoring the completely dystopic dictatorship and near-apocalyptic context that'd be required for such a scenario, of course.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone pointed out to me, the euromomo website is useful for this, it tracks the total mortality rate across Europe and compares it with the historical data. By ignoring the hospitalized/homestuck difference one can have a clearer idea of what is happening. Sadly I don't know of a way to get the data for the whole world.

Euromomo data is really interesting to me because of these two points: 1) the spike in death rate caused by Covid-19 this year is of the same magnitude as the normal flu season spike in 2016 2) this year's flue season spike was low compared to recent years. Maybe due to a warmer summer? One interpretation could be that a large number of vulnerable people escaped death from regular ILIs this European season, only to s…

When looking at a single region like Bergamo, the death toll is four times higher than normal... Absolutely nothing like a normal flu season spike. See graph in http://archive.is/AaJ76

If you look at the euromomo information for a country it is averaged across all regions, that includes those regions that started lockdown before severe outbreak, so the spike averages down to be small. I.e. you can’t look at the country info and make conclusions about the severity of the disease.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#317
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most death report forms have fields for a primary cause and contributing causes.

For influenza, the CDC includes deaths by pneumonia during flu season as part of the official death count because the certificates don't reliably list the true cause of death. We see this happening now in the US with unofficial deaths getting lumped into the C19 deaths, some of which may very well have been flu.

Actually at least in Germany the numbers for influenza are entirely based on statistics. In particular the 25000 people died of influenza in 2017 number that is thrown around is based on looking at the usual statistics over the same period and everything above that is attributed to influenza. I think we will only have only have accurate statistics about the death rates etc in maybe a year

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#318
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too am a 'pretty sure I had it already' person. I have also spoken to others that, like me, think they might have had it already. In the weeks before the story went crazy I bought a dehumidifier in the belief that this might help me eradicate a dry cough that would not go away. Not for one moment did I think I had coronavirus at the time, however, as time went on, I began to wonder. Placebo or not, the dehumidifier…

Same, I had it starting January 4th in the SF (North) Bay Area, I'm about 90% sure. I was probably basically a super spreader too, tbh. I went to work every day, 'cause I tend to power through whatever is thrown at me. At least I avoided shaking hands. People were even talking about it back then... they didn't know it was Corona, but friends I know who are nurses were saying there is a "weird, bad respiratory infecti…

There is strong evidence COVID-19 was not circulating in the Bay Area in January. Samples collected by the Seattle Flu Study in Jan/Feb 2020 have been retested and COVID-19 was not found before Feb 21. As Trevor Bedford says, had COVID-19 been circulating in CA it almost certainly would have showed up quickly in WA. There is other evidence based on the genetics of sequenced viruses. Details: https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1249414291297464321

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#319
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No country except Iceland or South Korea knows how many are infected, everyone else's numbers are horribly wrong. Is South Korea still consideered an outlier WRT testing regimes? Not to throw shade on their great efforts in leading the way, but many other countries now have extensive testing.

Australia has highest per-capita testing in the world. New Zealand is doing well. A number of other developed nations have been testing people since the start, but Australia and NZ have some added benefits of distance and relatively small populations that are helping them counter the pandemic better than most.

Also for anyone looking at NZ/Australia graphs, a large number of the cases are people returning from overseas that are detected (it is estimated there are 1 million NZers overseas, 5 million left). This has the effect of making the exponential growth look slow (unless the community transmission goes out of control, but both countries appear to be preventing uncontrolled CT).

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to ask what phenomenon causes an exponential increase in deaths/day and does not increase ICU utilization. The answer I’ve seen seems to be “yes, the disease is killing a steadily growing number of people but they’re older and aren’t going to the ICU before they die.” This is where Italy was at one point; they just got there much later.

As someone pointed out to me, the euromomo website is useful for this, it tracks the total mortality rate across Europe and compares it with the historical data. By ignoring the hospitalized/homestuck difference one can have a clearer idea of what is happening. Sadly I don't know of a way to get the data for the whole world.

Another note on mortality tracking is that everyone is staring themselves blind on corona-related deaths, and comparing between countries, and exclaiming that the higher the death rate per capita is, the more of a failure the country's policies are.

But this isn't necessarily true. You have to look at the total mortality, and the excess mortality. If a country has high corona mortality, but no excess mortality, it means that most people dying from coronavirus are people who normally would have died from something else anyway. And whatever policies that country has have to be good enough.

If a country has high corona mortality and excess mortality, then it's fair to say that that country's policies aren't enough, and it's fair to have the discussion whether you could do more or should do more.

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